Wilderness.org - FWShttp://wilderness.org/taxonomy/term/2431
enWolf killing on Alaska’s Unimak Island: Help stop this misguided planhttp://wilderness.org/blog/wolf-killing-alaska%E2%80%99s-unimak-island-help-stop-misguided-plan
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Jan 28, 2011</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/bios/staff/laura-bailey">Laura Bailey</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>
Times aren&rsquo;t looking too optimistic for the gray wolves that inhabit Alaska&rsquo;s rugged Unimak island on the eastern tip of the Aleutians.</p>
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Despite Unimak&rsquo;s incredible wildness and its status as part of a national wildlife refuge, the island may no longer be a safe haven for the charismatic animals that may soon find themselves in the cross-hairs of the state of Alaska and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.</p>
<p>
Alaska and the USFWS are pushing a predator control plan that would&nbsp; kill more than three-quarters of the wolf populations on Unimak, which is 98 percent federally protected Wilderness and part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.&nbsp;</p>
<p>
How is it that the Fish and Wildlife Service, whose mission it is to protect wildlife, is considering such a plan?</p>
<p>
<img align="left" src="/sites/default/files/legacy/profiler/wolf-and-pups-3x2.jpg" title="Wolf and pups" /> It all comes down to a shrinking caribou herd that the state of Alaska would like to revive for various reasons, including for the benefit of big-game hunting. The Unimak caribou herd&rsquo;s numbers have fluctuated over the years, but most recently it&rsquo;s said to have shrunk to 400 with dangerously low bull populations. The state of Alaska&rsquo;s goal is to increase the herd to 1,000. It suggests the best way to do that is to drastically thin the island&rsquo;s wolf population through aerial gunning and gassing wolf pups in their dens.</p>
<p>
The state has put pressure on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to allow the shooting, and now, after some initial resistance, the agency is seriously considering a plan to allow it.</p>
<p>
Boosting the caribou herd to healthier numbers may be a laudable goal, but the problem with the proposed wolf killing is that no one has provided evidence that suggests the plan would have its intended effect.</p>
<p>
The Fish and Wildlife Service has conducted an environmental assessment, which is the first step to clearing the plan. But this analysis does not properly study other possible culprits for the herd&rsquo;s thinning, including disease, poor winter forage conditions, changing weather patterns and predation by other predators, such as the islands many bears. <a href="http://tws.convio.net/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&amp;id=2213" target="_blank">Click here to ask the Fish and Wildlife Service to do better.</a></p>
<p>
The environmental assessment includes four alternatives that the agency will choose from. One is to take no action, leaving the wolf population alone. The other three all include killing wolves on a large scale, but each differs in approach; two alternatives propose shooting from helicopters or airplanes while a third proposes putting wolf hunters on the ground who would then be directed by aircraft.</p>
<p>
While the Fish and Wildlife Service has not chosen a preferred alternative, the agency has indicated it will likely choose ane of the lethal control options. Before the agency can move forward, they are required by law to <a href="http://tws.convio.net/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&amp;id=2213" target="_blank">allow the public to weigh in</a>.</p>
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The deadline for official comments has passed, but we&rsquo;re continuing to put pressure on the agency to make the right decision. <a href="http://tws.convio.net/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&amp;id=2213" target="_blank">Please help us by speaking up.</a></p>
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It&rsquo;s critical that we raise our voices against this rushed plan, because if the agency does not hear significant protest, wolf shooting will move forward in May.</p>
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Not only will wolves be sacrificed without proper scientific evidence, but allowing aerial gunning sets a dangerous precedent for all other designated Wilderness areas.</p>
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<a href="../../imce?app=ckeditor|sendto%40ckeditor_fileUrl|&amp;CKEditor=edit-body&amp;CKEditorFuncNum=4&amp;langCode=en#" onclick="imce.send('Unimak-Island-Alaska-USFWS-web.jpg'); return false;" title="Send to ckeditor"><img alt="Unimak Island, Alaska. Courtesy USFWS." src="/sites/default/files/legacy/profiler/Unimak-Island-Alaska-USFWS-web.jpg" style="width: 300px; height: 198px" /></a>A full 98 percent of Unimak is designated Wilderness, meaning it has the government&rsquo;s highest level of protection. The island is known for its supreme wildness, and a landscape of towering volcanoes, soaring bluffs, pounding surf and forest and tundra. This is not a place where helicopters should be gunning animals.</p>
<p>
What&rsquo;s needed in this case is more study, which means a full <a href="http://www.epa.gov/reg3esd1/nepa/eis.htm" target="_blank">Environmental Impact Statement</a> (EIS) must be conducted. An EIS is a more stringent assessment than&nbsp;the environmental assessment that has already been completed. That EIS study must look at all potential causes for the decline, including, but not limited to climate change effects, caribou forage and habitat, disease, prior management of the herd and other predation.</p>
<p>
<a href="http://tws.convio.net/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&amp;id=2213" target="_blank">You can help by taking action here.</a></p>
<p>
Photos:<br />
Grey wolf. Courtesy USFWS.<br />
Unimak Island, Alaska. Courtesy USFWS.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-video field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"></div></div>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 18:34:30 +0000Anonymous104150 at http://wilderness.orghttp://wilderness.org/blog/wolf-killing-alaska%E2%80%99s-unimak-island-help-stop-misguided-plan#commentsTackling Climate Change Now - and Laterhttp://wilderness.org/blog/tackling-climate-change-now-and-later
<div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Oct 19, 2010</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>I recently took a trip to Alaska, to learn about how climate change is affecting the people that live on the front lines of a warming world. The following was originally posted on the website <a href="http://www.care2.com/causes/author/jpleous/">Care2.com</a>. </em>In a small restaurant a stone&rsquo;s throw from the Arctic Ocean last week I heard a familiar argument against investing in <a href="/content/what-climate-change-adaptation-anyway">climate adaptation</a>: focusing on adaptation takes attention away from the critical work of reducing dangerous carbon pollution. This case for &quot;simply&rdquo; capping carbon emissions (something that has been elusive for decades) has been a bread-and-butter argument of climate activists for years. However, mounting scientific evidence shows that climate changes are occurring and will continue to occur for years regardless of future pollution reductions.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Rather than the luxury of a &ldquo;<a href="http://www.care2.com/causes/global-warming/blog/lets-get-the-whole-climate-change-job-done/">reduction</a> vs. <a href="/content/green-jobs-include-more-you-might-think">adaptation</a>&rdquo; debate, decades of inaction on climate pollution forced us into a &ldquo;both-and&rdquo; scenario: we must ramp down pollution immediately to prevent the worst case scenarios AND invest now to keep our <a href="http://www.care2.com/causes/environment/blog/green-jobs-go-beyond-renewable-energy/">communities and environment resilient</a> in a warming world.</p>
<p>Two items in my email inbox this morning are proof positive that the Obama Administration is taking a hard look at adaptation. First, the Fish and Wildlife Service released its <em><a href="http://www.fws.gov/home/climatechange/pdf/CCStrategicPlan.pdf">Strategic Plan for Adaptation to Accelerating Climate Change</a></em>. The document outlines the Service&rsquo;s approach to addressing climate effects, including the establishment of Regional Climate Science Partnerships, <a href="http://www.fws.gov/science/shc/lcc.html">Landscape Conservation Cooperatives</a>, facilitating the development of a National Fish and Wildlife Climate Adaptation Strategy, and becoming carbon neutral by 2020. This bold series of goals will demand equally bold budgets and personal commitment from FWS staff from the DC office to each and every refuge across the country.</p>
<p>As if that wasn&rsquo;t enough to make an adaptation fan perk up, the <a href="http://www2.ucar.edu/">University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)</a> released a statement today giving folks a heads up that they will soon release their <a href="http://www.joss.ucar.edu/events/2010/ncas/summit_report.html">National Climate Adaptation Summit Report</a>, following the <a href="http://www.joss.ucar.edu/events/2010/ncas/index.html">National Climate Adaptation Summit</a> that took place in May. (More information on the interesting <a href="http://www.joss.ucar.edu/events/2010/ncas/presentations.html">presentations</a> given at the Summit can be found <a href="http://www.joss.ucar.edu/events/2010/ncas/presentations.html">here</a>). As with the FWS document, releasing reports is the easy part of climate adaptation&mdash;the hard and important part is ahead of us.</p>
<p>While <a href="http://www.fws.gov/home/climatechange/pdf/CCStrategicPlan.pdf">FWS defines &quot;adaptation&quot;</a> as &ldquo;Minimizing the impact of climate change on fish and wildlife through the application of cutting-edge science in managing species and habitats&rdquo;, this will mean <a href="/content/green-jobs-save-planet-american-jobs-american-lands">different things to different communities</a>. As I heard during presentations and quiet dinners during the <a href="http://www.northslope.org/">NSSI </a>meetings in <a href="http://www.care2.com/causes/global-warming/blog/notes-from-the-tp-of-the-world/">Barrow</a>, strategies such migration corridors that allow species to migrate northward to cooler habitat (which could work in much of the Lower 48) don&rsquo;t work at the top of the continent when there&rsquo;s no farther north for species to go. However, a common theme emerges: <a href="http://www.care2.com/causes/environment/blog/green-jobs-go-beyond-renewable-energy/">investing in adaptation protects and creating jobs</a> across the country.</p>
<p>These plans and strategies are excellent first steps, but they need to be followed by second, third, and fourth ones so that we continue on the path towards improving the resiliency of our lands in a warming world. Another needed step right now is to ensure that the agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service have the funding they need to begin adapting our lands.</p>
<p><em>Follow JP on Twitter:&nbsp;@TWSjp</em></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-video field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"></div></div>Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:30:09 +0000Anonymous103657 at http://wilderness.orghttp://wilderness.org/blog/tackling-climate-change-now-and-later#comments